1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a package and associated label blank for a pack of products of the tobacco industry, especially for packs of cigarettes, made up of a single sheet or from a single blank.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
For the packs of cigarettes according to the related art, two types of packages are generally found. A first type of package is the hard package or "box," the main element of which is made up from a blank cut out of a thin sheet of cardboard. A package of this type generally includes a bottom part and a cover part, pivoting relative to the former, permitting the pack to be opened and reclosed. This type of pack has the advantage of being relatively rigid and thus protects the contained cigarettes well. A second type of package is the "soft" package, the main element of which is made up from a blank cut out of a thin sheet of paper. A package of this type generally includes a tearing tongue permitting a portion of the package to be torn and withdrawn in order to be able to access the cigarettes; it is not generally possible to reclose the pack. Although this package consumes less raw material than the preceding one, being made up of a sheet of paper instead of a sheet of cardboard, it is less rigid and protects the contained cigarettes to a lesser degree.
The two types of package above are conventionally supplemented by a plurality of layers of different materials. First the cigarettes are wrapped in a thin composite sheet comprising an aluminized face, after which the pack thus constituted is inserted in a hard or soft package as described above. This last package is subsequently covered with a transparent sheet, generally of acetate, cellophane, or polypropylene. These three physical layers each have a particular function. The aluminized sheet is opaque to protect the cigarettes from light. The layer of paper or of thin cardboard ensures the maintenance of the pack and comprises impressions of the trademark and other indications on its outer faces. The last transparent layer is sealed in order to ensure the fluid-tightness of the pack and to preserve the moisture, the aroma and the flavor of the cigarettes.
The prior packs described above possess a series of drawbacks. First, at the time of manufacture of the pack, it is necessary to dispose successively several superimposed layers of different materials, necessitating complex machines. Afterward the user must tear, open, or separate three layers before reaching the cigarettes. In addition, a package comprising these diverse layers is expensive in raw materials for its manufacture and remains expensive for its disposal since it is composed of an assembly of several materials which cannot be disposed of through the same channels, i.e., they are not jointly recyclable. Also, some of the specified materials are not able to be formed from biodegradable materials.
Another drawback of the prior packs resides in the fact that they comprise only a single possibility of opening, generally determined by the type of package considered, as described above. It may be advantageous for the user to be able to choose the type of opening he prefers, permitting him in particular to grasp the cigarettes without having to touch their filter top, or else, if he possesses for example an appropriate refillable case, to be able to open his pack in such away that it can be used in combination with this case.
The package described in FR-A-2,130,640 is of the conventional type described above, i.e., only comprising a single opening of a part of the upper face. One of the embodiments of FR-A-1,033,267 shows a package comprising two identical openings disposed at the two opposite end portions of the upper face, without resulting in any advantage for the user. The package described in DE-U-1,883,769 comprises two identical openings disposed in such a manner that the pack can be open in one sense or the other; such a package is a solution only to one of the previously discussed problems. The conception of the package according to U.S. Pat. No. 2,026,477 differs from what has been described up to now, in that the package can be opened in two steps, by the same type of opening, in order to reach initially the first cigarettes then afterwards those remaining in the pack. The packing according to U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,140 is a "box" package which conventionally consists of a plurality of superimposed sheets and comprises two openings of different type. It is well known to one skilled in the art that the hard packages of the "box" type are conceived quite differently from those of the "soft" type as in the invention. Moreover, none of the above-mentioned packages attempts to solve the problem of reducing the number of the necessary superimposed layers, which notably results in a waste of raw materials and makes disposal of the scraps resulting from these packages difficult.